Me Myself:
This is really far streched mate !! The last accident was in 1969 and nothing happened until 1988 which makes it a good 19 years.
The question that needs to be asked is :
How come we went from the horror show of the 1960's to the pretty good track record of the 70's and 80's.
I can partly answer that one. 2 of these 1960's crashes were the direct result of very poor CRM. I can remember flying with skippers who were F/O's during that period of time and you wouldn't believe the stories they had to tell.
Obviously, things were done during these 19 years and then..........well, the plot was lost.
Fast growth, if a factor, is not acceptable. AF isn't the only airline that grew fast in the last 20 years.
I don't want to get drawn into a prolonged discussion on this, but all I'm saying is that I don't believe that your personal feelings about a declining safety culture are necessarily backed up by the evidence of accident stastics. The point I was making is that by selecting arbitrary start dates and periods for the accident statistics quoted, very different pictures can be painted of the 'change' in accident rate. (Why not start in 1960 and divide into 10 year periods? - again, a completely different 'trend' might emerge; the periods selected were clearly chosen to give the worst possible impression).
It is very likely that in a strict statistical sense, the number of crashes in recent years tells you nothing meaningful about AFs safety record. (As in 'the null hypothesis that AFs safety record has got worse was not proved to a confidence interval of 95%' [or whatever]).
You can have your own anecdotal evidence about a decline in safety culture, and that is what you should probably base your arguments on. After all, that user feedback is what the Flight Safety dept of any airline should focus on, surely? (I mean, they don't work harder only if they've had an accident, do they?)
As I say, I don't have an axe to grind about this - just pointing out that the statistical 'evidence' being touted for a decline in AF safety isn't very
meaningful.
We've wandered away from AF447 a bit. I'm done on this subject, anyway.